


Blood Links

by orphan_account



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Betrayal, M/M, Mystery, Slow Burn, old fashioned spy thrills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 04:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12182814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: 1 mission post-Spectre. M suspects that Q is a double agent - possibly the most dangerous double agent to ever infiltrate MI6. 007 is assigned to investigate.





	Blood Links

“You must be joking,” James says.

“Unfortunately not,” M replies, as he applies fork and knife to his fish with surgical precision.

“Is this my punishment for going offline? I assure you, once I get back to Six, my report will provide more than enough justification.”

“Please,” M says cooly. “Ease off the histrionics. I am being entirely serious here.”

James pauses. “You really believe he’s a mole?”

M sighs, puts down a bite of fish, and leans forward.

“Bond. I do not believe in anything except for doing my job. I _suspect_ , and this is a dangerous thing to suspect, do you understand? That is why I am here, sitting with you in your favorite dingy establishment, before you regain contact with anybody. You’re the best option for this job. He knows you. He trusts you.”

“And you trust me?”

“Let's just say you’ve taken a few more bullets for our cause than he has,” M says with a smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes. James supposes that's as good as it'll get. 

“It still strikes me as highly unlikely. In a handful of years, he’s saved more agents that I have.”

“Including yourself, I see. Yet I’ve never considered you the type to be swayed by gratitude. Unlike you, it’s his job to protect his colleagues, not a favor he's doing out of the kindness of his heart.”

“And I suppose it’s my job now, too,” Bond remarks through a mouthful of chips. They’re so greasy that he might be embarrassed that M knows he eats here. That is, if the smartblood hadn’t completely done away with the last vestiges of self-consciousness he had left. There’s something rather revealing about having your location broadcasted at all times.

“This has the potential to be much bigger than our lives, 007,” M says lowly.

“I understand,” he says calmly. “I’ll do it. Though I never really had a choice, did I?”

M looks pleased. 

“Excellent. In the meantime, you’ll be working as a trainer. You’re on a mandated suspension from field work for the next two months by my directive. Use whatever means you need to investigate him. Also, this is your last chance to request anything from me. Is there something you need?”

“A car,” James says after a moment. “It’ll give me a chance to get near him. And he won’t make me another unless the order comes from you.”

M purses his lips. “Fine. Is that all?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Alright then,” M says, folding his napkin. “From now on, this conversation never happened. I talked to you about taking a break and your inevitable retirement, nothing more. You’ll carry on in absolute secrecy. Don’t bother coming to me with day-to-day news. I only want to hear about it if it’s big.”

Bond grins wolfishly. “I’ll be sure to let you know when I find out.”

To his credit, M looks only vaguely disgusted, and it might be the fish.

________________________________________________________

 

 _Trust_ is rather a stretch. Even James knows that stealing his car and jeopardizing his job is not exactly the foundation to a healthy Quartermaster-agent relationship. But if it’s possible that Q is on the wrong side of certain recent events, he will have to gain that trust.

What’s more concerning is M’s insinuation that James is biased when it comes to Q. Of course, it was probably just a barb. However, if anything, James has been the one putting too much trust in Q. Trusting him to lie about his smartblood location and put a (life-saving) explosive in his watch. But he is in no position to harbor extraneous loyalties. Three agents dead in two months. Surveillance cutting out at the most convenient moments. Intel with origins so complicated that Q himself struggles to explain it in any depth further than the most layman.

There is something insidious going on. M has his suspicions, and it’s James’s job to answer them.

While James is not exactly the most covert choice of agent, he is one of the most experienced, and one of the few that M thinks he can trust. He would say that M is getting paranoid, but given the recent debacles, it’s never been clearer that vigilance is necessary.

James leaves the fish-and-chips joint not long after M, without finishing his food. He still feels blood under his fingernails, dust under his clothes. Only two hours ago did he arrive back in London. What he really wants to do is go back to his flat and have a shower, a drink, and go to sleep. Instead, he hails a cab and heads back to MI6.

By the time he arrives, it’s past midnight. The main offices are deserted, but Q-Branch is still awake, as always. A few techies look up when he walks in, before resuming their tapping and tinkering.

“007,” Q says from within his dock of electronics. “What brings you back so early?”

“I wanted to get the last of the holes punched in me before I started recovering.”

Q looks up from his displays in surprise. He doesn't appear to have gotten a haircut while Bond was gone, and frankly, it's starting to get a little out of control.

“How considerate.”

James twitches his lips upwards.

“Well then,” Q says after an awkward silence. “Come on over then. You're lucky I’ve got another batch ready.”

James settles himself into the leather injecting chair, acutely aware of how grimy he is under his suit. He pulls off his jacket and rolls up his sleeve in preparation. Q swabs his arm with alcohol, and inspects the veins. He tuts disapprovingly when he sees the cuts at Bond’s wrists

“I hope they didn’t suck you dry.”

“You know they did.”

“A shame,” Q says, and gestures for Bond to roll up his other sleeve. "I'm rather impressed that you still managed to destroy thousands of dollars of my work _and_ cut off all communication while completely immobilized."

“Perhaps if you didn’t make my blood a technological commodity, they would have abstained.”

“Perhaps,” Q says blandly as he runs a wipe down the other arm. “Luckily for us, the nanoparticles decompose within twenty minutes of falling below body temperature. Even if they had survived long enough to analyze it, they would have found nothing but toxic waste in your blood.”

This time, Q doesn’t bother surprising him with the injection. He lines up the needle, and Bond suppresses a snarl when it goes in. It's blunt enough to leave bruising, as he knows from the last time. 

Q watches the particles disperse through James’s body on the nearby monitor. “Alright. You’re set.”

Bond gets up and straightens his sleeves, shrugging his jacket back on. He hasn’t had time yet to elucidate his plan of action for investigating Q, but he figures that acting normal is an appropriate start.

“Goodnight, Q” he says, making for the exit.

“Goodnight, 007,” Q replies.

“Oh, and Bond?” he says as James reaches the doorway.

“Yes?”

“You wouldn’t, by any chance, have any tech to return, would you?”

James stares. 

“They went over me with a fine-toothed comb, Q. They took my _blood_ , for heaven’s sakes,” he says. “What were you hoping, that I'd shoved the radio up my ass?”

“That's a no, then,” Q mutters. 

________________________________________________________

 

James goes back to his flat. He takes a shower, soaps off all the grime, and has a drink.

Then he sits on his couch in a bathrobe, stitching up the cut on his leg. Miraculously, it’s the only one necessitating stitches. His captors were more interested in blood than torture this time.

It bothers him a little that he has a post-mission routine now. It only makes it all the more obvious that he’s aging. Coming up the stairs to his flat, peeling off the bloody suit, and even reaching the bottom of the cut at his ankle is getting harder. It’s an unpleasant thought, but he has to admit that a different sort of mission may be appropriate for the time.

Q. The young, spotty, enigmatic new quartermaster. Bond tries to envision him secretly funneling data out of MI6’s servers, or feeding an agent false intel. It doesn’t sit easily. If he’s the mole, he’s either a very good actor, or an unconventional mole. Perhaps he’s unconsciously sabotaging. It’s been known to happen when agents crack under the pressure. Bond catches himself then. If he’s honest, Bond doesn’t want Q to be culpable at all. He’s too green, too talented, too naive. But that’s what good moles do, isn’t it? Appear harmless and make you grow fond. Q’s far from harmless, though. He’s immensely powerful, and he knows it. The pajamas boast at the National Gallery hadn't been far off.

Bond winces as he pulls a stitch through a particularly sensitive patch of tissue. He won’t be able to go through his usual route of seduce-extract-evacuate in this assignment. Far from it, in fact. He’ll have to invent a whole new method of attack. A long con for a long con.

He snips the thread and ties it off. A small rivulet of blood drips down, and he catches it in his palm before it can stain the couch. He looks at the inky spot in his hand and has an idea.

In his cabinet, there's a coil of paper-thin plastic tubing. It’s something he stole from Q-Branch a while ago, for reasons he doesn’t remember. He rubs open the end and tips the drop of blood in. It immediately spreads into a flat section of tubing. Then he cuts the other end of the tubing and ties it into a snug bracelet around his ankle. _Body temperature_. If he wants to be able to get off Q’s maps one day, he’ll need to start collecting now.


End file.
